“But she’s otherwise well?” Frevisse asked quickly.
Instead of the instant reassurance Frevisse wanted, Dame Claire paused in slightly frowning thought before saying only slowly, “I don’t know that she’s ill.”
Frevisse waited until sure Dame Claire was not going to say more, then asked, “But you don’t know that she’s not?”
Somewhere still in thought, Dame Claire nodded before saying, still slowly. “I’ve thought that it isn’t that she’s ill but that, like Mistress Petham, she’s tired. That may be all it is.”
“Lent seems longer some years than others,” Frevisse offered.
But, “This began before Lent. Before Advent even. That’s when I first saw sign of it anyway.”
“That she was tired?”
“‘Worn’ might be the better word. She’s not young, you know.”
Frevisse almost protested that Domina Elisabeth had to be much about Dame Claire’s own age and not that many years older than herself; but the thought came to her that, after all, neither she nor Dame Claire was likely to be thought “young.”
“She’s borne the burden of being prioress for twelve years, after all,” Dame Claire went on. “It’s not been a light burden.”
“And now this,” said Frevisse, meaning Sister Cecely and Abbot Gilberd and all the rest.
“And now this,” Dame Claire agreed. She stirred delicately at the costmary. “So I’m doing what I can to ease her. Sadly, there’s very little.”
The cloister bell gave a sudden single clang. Both women raised and turned their heads, as if they could see it from where they were and Frevisse said, “And I would guess that’s sign you’re out of time anyway.”
Dame Claire sighed. “Yes.” She moved the clay pot from the fire. “You go on. I’ll be there shortly.”
Frevisse went, joining the other nuns in the cloister walk in time to see Domina Elisabeth come from her stairs, going toward the outer door to greet her brother in the yard and welcome him in. Dame Perpetua and Dame Margrett, as the eldest and youngest of the nuns, went with her while the rest of them lined together along the cloister walk in readiness for their own greeting. Elbows jostled as they placed themselves, straightening veils and shaking out skirts, Dame Amicia giggling a little, before they tucked hands into opposite sleeves and went still, a place left for Dame Claire who hurried into it, twitched at her skirts and veil, and joined them in stillness.
The outer door had been left open. Whoever had been set to watch for Abbot Gilberd’s arrival had given good forewarning: for a few moments all was as still in the guesthall yard as in the cloister now. Then came the clatter of hooves on cobbles that would be the abbot on his mule and his men on their horses riding through the gateway. When that stopped, Domina Elisabeth’s voice and then a man’s could be heard giving greeting to each other, although the words were lost along the passageway. Then it was not words but Abbot Gilberd and Domina Elisabeth themselves coming along the passageway and into the cloister walk, and at sight of Abbot Gilberd, the nuns all together and with bowed heads sank in low curtsy to him, holding there a short moment until he said, “Rise, my good women.”
They all rose together, and he raised his right hand and said a blessing over them. He was a large man, both in height and width, and made larger by the amply pleated long gown and surcoat he wore. They were correctly Benedictine black but their wool was closely woven and richly sheened, with black velvet edging the lower hems and the hanging sleeves of the surcoat, while black budge—lambs’ wool—circled his throat.
All of that added to the authority of his blessing that Domina Elisabeth, Dame Perpetua, Dame Margrett, and Father Henry had probably received in the yard, because they simply waited behind him until he had done, Domina Elisabeth only then coming forward to say, “If you would please to come this way, my lord,” with a small beckon toward the stairs to her rooms.
“I would, my lady,” he returned and swept up the stairs and out of sight, leaving her and Father Henry to follow him, Dame Margrett trailing in their wake.
In the cloister walk straight spines went slack, heads lifted, and there were sighs of relief heaved before—like birds startled apart—the nuns all scattered to their next tasks. Dame Claire said at Dame Amicia, “I have the costmary for the water,” while Dame Amicia said to Dame Juliana, “Are the cakes ready to go up?”
“The cakes and the wine both,” Dame Juliana replied. “We’ll fetch them. Sister Helen, come.”
Dame Perpetua and Dame Thomasine were starting away toward the church, to make certain one more time that everything would be perfect to Abbot Gilberd’s eye when he attended the next Office. Frevisse asked, “How many men came with him?”
“Six,” Dame Perpetua answered without pause in her going.
Six was not as bad as it might have been, Frevisse thought. In truth, it was quite moderate for an abbot. Had he taken some thought for this being just after Lent? Or perhaps Domina Elisabeth had been bold enough to say something in her message to him.
Frevisse paused in her going to say to Dame Johane, “Are you grateful now you only have to watch Sister Cecely, instead of scurry with the rest of us?”
Bent over to pull from the shadows the stool she had pushed out of sight into the guest parlor, Dame Johane replied, “Grateful until I have to see her up to face the abbot.”
“I won’t go!” Sister Cecely declared from beyond the doorway.
“Then you’ll be dragged,” said Frevisse coldly. “Abbot Gilberd brought men enough for that.”
Leaving Sister Cecely to think on that, Frevisse went yet again to the guesthall, as uneasy as everyone else that all be well for the abbot and happy to find that Luce had everything well in hand. Ela was awake, Luce said, but content to stay in the kitchen if she was not needed otherwhere. Even better, Luce said that one of the abbot’s men had told her that there was a cart coming, on Abbot Gilberd’s orders, bringing supplies of both food and drink. “The fellow said it should be here this afternoon some time.”
Frevisse breathed a prayer of thanks and relief and said, “Be certain to tell Ela. She’ll rest the better knowing it.”
Luce gave a wide smile. “Already did.” She gave a twitch of her head toward the best chamber’s door. “They’ve already shifted in whatever was on the pack mule that came with them. Making themselves quite to home, they are.”
“Good. So long as they do the work themselves,” Frevisse said, her tartness not entirely in jest; but when she went to see what was toward in the room, she spoke mildly enough to the servant overseeing his fellows’ work. The pack mule must have been well-laden. A finely woven red and yellow carpet was on the floor beside the bed and another one was laid over the otherwise plain table where the nunnery’s pewter pitcher and goblets, brought especially from the cloister, had been removed in favor of Abbot Gilberd’s silver ones. Frevisse did not wait to see what else might come out of the two small chests sitting open on the floor. Having ascertained that the abbot’s men were content at what they were doing, she crossed the hall to where Rowcliffe and his cousin Symond had drawn themselves well aside from the abbot-bustle.
They were too near to Breredon’s door for her liking, but there was only so much space in the hall; she could hardly ask them to sit in the kitchen or on the roof, but she did ask them where the men were who had come with them, not having seen them today.
“Told them they could stay in the stable,” Rowcliffe said. “You’ve enough going on here without them underfoot, too.”
She thanked him for that, and he offered, “You can have the rest of us out of your way if your abbot will hand over Edward and the deeds. Let him do that and we’ll be gone. Is he dealing with the…” He thought better of whatever he had been going to call Sister Cecely and changed to, “When can we talk with him?”
“That’s for him to say, not me. He’s with our prioress at present.” And although perhaps she should not, she added, “Soon can’t be too soon for me, as well as for y
ou.”
Rowcliffe gave an appreciative grunt at her bluntness, Symond openly chuckled, and she went on to see how Breredon did.
The best that could be said was that he was better, but given how bad he had been, “better” was not anywhere near to “well.” At least he was lying on his back, stretched out the length of his bed, instead of huddled in sickness and pain, but because he looked to be sleeping and his man Coll was asleep on a pallet beyond the foot of the bed, Frevisse saw him only from the doorway while asking Ida very quietly how he did.
“Whatever it was, he’s at last resting quietly,” the woman said. “He’s kept a little broth down, too.”
Contented with that, Frevisse left her, going to see what Mistress Lawsell’s present complaint might be and found the woman very mellow, watching her daughter and Jack Rowcliffe sitting on the bed playing chess on the hall’s battered board. He and Elianor made to stand up when they saw Frevisse, but she put out a hand to stop them, saying, “If you jostle the board, she’ll say you did it because you’re losing.”
“I’m not losing,” Jack said with easy confidence.
“Yes, he is,” said Elianor pleasantly.
“Now, Elianor,” her mother chided in soft warning, but whether against boasting or against winning a game from a young man, Frevisse could not tell. She guessed the latter and guessed, too, that it would make no difference to Elianor.
Leaving them, she had just time to tell Luce to collect the pewter pitcher and goblets from the abbot’s chamber and bring them back to the cloister at her first chance. Then the cloister bell summoned her to Sext. The Office was sparsely attended. Neither Domina Elisabeth nor Abbot Gilberd nor Dame Margrett came. The nuns in their stalls looked at each other, made uncertain by the lack of their prioress, until Dame Juliana drew a steadying breath and began the Office.
The day continued disjointed from there. No reason for Domina Elisabeth’s absence came down from the parlor. Nor did Abbot Gilberd or Father Henry or Dame Margrett, and neither did any of them come to Nones either. Afterward, dinner’s food and drink went up, but Malde and Alson coming down could only say, “They’re sitting there. Been talking, I’d guess,” which was no more than anyone could have guessed on their own and therefore no help to curiosity at all.
It was early in the afternoon that Dame Margrett came briefly down, to tell Dame Johane to take Sister Cecely up. Somehow every other nun was in the cloister walk just then and watched the three women go from the parlor and up the stairs, Sister Cecely quietly between the other two with no sign of her earlier protests. Frevisse, at her desk in one of the several stalls along the walk beside the church where the nuns worked who copied the books that made some of the priory’s income, had been trying to pretend to herself that she was working, but when they had gone, she admitted her pretence and did nothing more than sharpen several quills and count how many pages of the Festial she had left to copy, aware while she wasted that time of the other nuns likewise finding reasons to linger here and there in the walk, or if they went away, soon coming back, so that all of them—and several servants for good measure—were there when Dame Margrett brought Sister Cecely down from the prioress’ parlor
Whatever they were hoping for, Sister Cecely’s head was bowed too low and she retreated too quickly deep into the shadows of what was become her cell for anyone to see if she had been crying as Dame Margrett said to them all, “I’m to take Edward to them now,” and to Dame Perpetua who was nearest, “Will you—” She beckoned with her head toward the parlor.
For answer, Dame Perpetua came forward, pulled the parlor door shut, and put herself in front of it, making it plain that Sister Cecely was going to have no chance at her son. Dame Margrett gave a tight-lipped, agreeing nod and went to fetch the boy.
Mistress Petham had surely foreseen he would be wanted. Dame Margrett came promptly back with him, Edward holding tightly to her hand. He was scrubbed and combed and tidy, but as they went past her, coming the direct way along the cloister, not the long one, Frevisse saw him roll his eyes toward the door shut between him and his mother, much like a frightened horse wary of a possible trap. Poor child, she thought.
He was rather a longer while with Abbot Gilberd than Frevisse would have thought necessary. Once Sister Cecely rapped on the inside of the door and demanded loudly if she couldn’t have the door open again and at least glimpse her little boy. When Dame Perpetua did not answer, Sister Cecely hit the door hard with a fist and afterward was silent again.
Edward did finally come down, tear-stained and in Father Henry’s care this time. The priest swept him along the cloister walk with what looked to Frevisse like anger—and not at Edward, Frevisse thought.
Dame Margrett was close behind them, and where the nuns had stood back from Father Henry’s way, they flurried to her, wanting to know what had been happening, but she shook her head at them, saying, “We’ve been strictly enjoined to silence about it. I can’t tell you.” She added to Frevisse, still at her desk, “You’re to go up. Domina Elisabeth wants you to see Abbot Gilberd to the guesthall now.”
Frevisse willingly took her own curiosity up the stairs to Domina Elisabeth’s parlor, to be met by a heavy quiet that answered none of her silent questions, only told her things were not well. Dame Johane stood beside the door with head down and hands folded into her opposite sleeves, still as a statue. Domina Elisabeth and her brother stood at the window in a matching stillness until at Frevisse’s scratch at the doorframe they both turned. With her own eyes now properly downcast, Frevisse could not read their faces, but Domina Elisabeth sounded both weary and taut as she ordered, “Please see my lord abbot to his chamber, dame.”
“Yes, my lady,” Frevisse said, making a curtsy of obedient willingness to both her and Abbot Gilberd. “My lord.”
Holding out his hand to Domina Elisabeth, he said, “I will see you tomorrow, when I’ve had chance to talk with these Rowcliffes.”
Domina Elisabeth took his hand, went down in a low curtsy, kissed one of the large-gemmed rings he wore, and rose. She let go his hand, but he took hers back in both of his, patted it comfortingly, and said firmly, “We’ll talk more. Don’t worry on it,” then swept away from her toward Frevisse, who quickly turned and led the way down the stairs, out of the cloister, and away to the guesthall, hurried along by him following close on her heels.
He said nothing the whole way and therefore neither could she. Nor did he trouble, as Frevisse curtsied to him outside the door to his chamber, to offer his ring to her to kiss, merely went past her and in without a word, and she was suddenly fiercely glad he had provided food and drink for himself. He clearly had the wealth for it, and St. Frideswide’s very much did not, and just at that moment she did not feel charitable toward him.
Also, as she returned toward the cloister, she found that she was angry—not at his wealth or even his neglect of courtesy to her but at whatever he had done to reduce everyone who had come near him in Domina Elizabeth’s parlor to one degree or another of rigid quiet or strangled anger.
Domina Elisabeth did come down to Vespers and sat at supper in the refectory with her nuns, but she barely raised her eyes from her breviary during the Office or from the table during supper, and afterward she disappeared to her rooms again. As thwartingly, during recreation’s hour Dame Margrett and Dame Johane held to their own silence, neither of them looking happy but both of them refusing to say anything of what had happened in the prioress’ parlor today, meaning that everyone, including Frevisse, went to bed that night dissatisfied.
She found herself still dissatisfied when she came awake for Matins, groped her feet into her shoes in the darkness, slipped on her over-gown against the middle-night chill, and went from her cell and down the dorter stairs by the light of the single small lamp beside them to the dark cloister walk and the church. Besides the light ever-burning above the altar, another lamp waited there for them to light their candles along the stalls, but before even one was lighted they were all startle
d by running footsteps up the nave and Luce was suddenly there out of the darkness, her day’s gown loose about her and only a cap tied over her disheveled hair as she grabbed the edge of the rood screen’s opening to stop her headlong coming and cried out, “Dame Claire! You have to come! He’s sick as anything! The Rowcliffe man this time!”
Chapter 20
The “Rowcliffe man” was Symond Hewet, and he was ill in much the way Breredon had been but far worse, vomiting blood before it was done. The fight to save him went on past dawn, so that when Dame Claire and Frevisse came finally out of the guesthall, it was into the clear daylight of another cool and cloudless morning. They stopped together at the top of the steps to take deep, grateful breaths, clearing the sick-room stench from their lungs, Frevisse breathing the air and feeling the sunlight as only someone could who had been dealing with death through the darkest hours of a night. It was a lovely morning, and Frevisse knew that when she stopped being so tired she could hardly think, she would be very glad there was a man alive who had been very close to dying, but just now all she felt was need to lie down and sleep for a goodly long while.
Beside her, echoing her feeling, Dame Claire said, “I am growing too old for that manner of night.”
“If I never have another such, I’ll be content,” Frevisse agreed as they started down the steps. “As infirmarian, can you rule that you and I should sleep before we do anything else today?”
“I can. I do. We break our fast, then we sleep, if only until Tierce.”
The other nuns were already gone to chapter meeting, so the two of them had the morning bread—with butter today, as a Paschal pleasure—and ale alone in the refectory, with Dame Claire telling Alson, who waited on them, to report to Domina Elisabeth that Dame Johane was sitting with the sick man and that she and Dame Frevisse were going to sleep now for a time. Then, because the dorter was forbidden to the nuns during the day without the prioress’ leave, they went to the infirmary. The few beds there were of course bare, but that was the very least of anything Frevisse cared about just then. She lay down on one and was asleep as she pulled the uncovered pillow under her head.
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